I smiled. That’s what I’d thought, too. “I bet that really helps them to open up and feel safe. I work with kids, obviously, and superheroes carry a lot of weight with them.”
Saint was my superhero. He’d rescued me from?—
No, that was silly. I hadn’t really been in any danger, and I didn’t really know Saint.
Whether my facial expression changed or whether Saint just felt the mood shift, he frowned. “I’m not happy about the way your brother set you up for this, the way he pranked you.”
“I’m not either,” I admitted. “I feel like such a fool for falling for it when I knew he was up to something.”
“What did he tell you about this event?” Saint asked.
“Nothing, really. He told me he had scored a job interview, but he had another opportunity come up at the same time,” I said.
“And you were willing to go to a job interview for him?” Saint asked, his non-damaged eyebrow raised.
I shrugged, then had to pull the blanket up over my shoulder on one side. I noticed Saint’s gaze zip to the bare skin I’d revealed for a second. “Lucas might be a jerk and the evil twin, but he’s still my brother. The rest of the family has moved away, and even though I should leave him to take care of himself, I still feel responsible for him. Plus, he really does need to get a steady job.”
“Is he unemployed?”
I winced. “Not really? I guess? He always seems to have one thing or another going on. Like whatever this other opportunity is he’s got going on this weekend. He’s at our family beach house, storing some things for a friend who is selling them online or something.”
Saint frowned at that. “What sort of things?”
“Nothing illegal,” I rushed to say. Though, actually, I didn’t know if I was telling the truth. Come to think of it, with Lucas, it probably was illegal.
“Whatever the case, it was wrong of him to send you to the omega auction without knowing what you were going to first,” Saint said.
I huffed a humorless laugh. “You can say that again. I’ve never been so scared in my life. If this is what he pranked me with this time, what more does he have up his sleeve?”
That was the wrong thing to say, as it turned out.
“I’m not letting him prank you like this ever again,” Saint said, standing.
“Thanks, but I’m not sure there’s much you can do about it,” I said, awkwardly getting to my feet with the blanket wrapped around me still.
“There’s always something to be done when it comes to standing up against a bully,” Saint insisted.
“Like what?” I asked, one eyebrow raised dubiously.
“You need to confront him,” Saint said. “You need to put your foot down and set boundaries that he can’t cross.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I’ve tried that before. It never seems to work. I am a boundaryless doormat.”
Saint didn’t like me saying that at all, I could tell. “What if I helped you confront him?” he asked.
My eyes went wide. “You’d do that? You’d help me work out my relationship with my brother?”
“Of course I would,” he said.
“But you don’t really know me,” I insisted.
Saint shrugged. “I feel responsible. And mediating was part of my training.”
“I really appreciate it,” I said, something warm and sentimental stirring in me. I really liked Saint. He lived up to his name.
“Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll go settle this right now?” he went on.
I wasn’t so sure. “It’s the middle of the night,” I said, glancing to the clock on the bedside table. Okay, it was ten p.m. For some people, the night was still young. “He’s all the way at our family’s beach house. He’s never going to change.”
